DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE FOR FORTEAN ZOOLOGY
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.
Psalms, 107:23, KJV
My father was a sailor. During the Second World War he served in the Battle of the Atlantic, and after the war he was with the Blue Funnel Line in Australia and South East Asia. He came ashore in 1947 to marry my mother, but he never stopped being in love with the sea. Until he died in 2006 he would tell me stories of his time on the ocean, and from him I inherited a respect and fascination for life on the dark waters.
It seems from recent evidence that my use of the word ‘inherited’ might not be incorrect. The website genotopia.scienceblog.com about human genetics wrote in the summer of 2011:
Researchers at Mystic University in Connecticut have identified a gene associated with seafaringness, according to an article to be published tomorrow in the journal Genetic Determinism Today. Patterns of inheritance of the long-sought gene offers hope for ‘sailing widows,’ and could help explain why the sailing life has tended to run in families and why certain towns and geographical regions tend historically to have disproportionate numbers of sea-going citizens. The gene is a form of the MAOA-L gene, previously associated with high-risk behavior and thrill-seeking.
So, did Odysseus, Sir Francis Drake, Thor Heyerdahl and my father have a genetic predisposition towards a life on the ocean waves? We probably will never know, and to be honest I don’t really care. All I know is that, for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by stories of the strange things that happen on, over and under the sea, and they have been part of my personal iconography. Take mermaids, for example. When I was small my father used to sing a most unseemly song, which went:
My Father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light
And he slept with a mermaid one fine night.
Many years later I actually met a young lady called Phillipa, known to everyone as ‘Flip’. Sadly, she has now left us, having succumbed to breast cancer about fifteen years ago. But both she and her mother told me (in a completely matter-of-fact manner) how she had seen a mermaid sitting on a rock off the Scilly Isles a few years before. When I came out with all the cryptozoological clichés about seals and manatees (not that I had any suspicion that a manatee should be off the coast of western Cornwall), she told me in no uncertain terms not to be so bloody stupid. She was a fisherman’s granddaughter and knew perfectly well what a seal looked like.
I have been in search of Morgawr, the Cornish sea-giant. I know several people who have seen it, and I am friends with the notorious Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels, who has himself called up monsters from the ‘vasty deep’. I have never seen this Irish wizard call up a sea monster, but I have seen him do something very similar on an Irish lake. But that is another story entirely.
I have known Neil Arnold for over fifteen years. He was a boy, only just out of school when I first knew him, and I have watched him mature into one of Britain’s foremost writers on Fortean subjects, giving what help and guidance I have been able along the way. I can think of no one better to write about the mysteries of the realm of Poseidon, and I am very proud that he has asked me to write the foreword for this fascinating and excellent book.